Laboratory animals live dual lives. They are the sentient, feeling subjects of their own lives. They are also the objects of biological research projects that very rarely benefit those animals themselves. This volume presents up-to-date information on how anesthetics, analgesics and tranquilizers affect animals' welfare as subjects and their use as objects. This chapter complements the technical information in this volume by asking, “What ethical obligations do we have to animals in laboratories? How should we use our available knowledge of animal suffering and its amelioration to conduct experiments?” We focus mostly on ethical questions in which the use of—or decisions not to use—anesthetics, analgesics, tranquilizers, or sedatives figure prominently.
Elsevier, Anesthesia and Analgesia in Laboratory Animals, Third Edition, 2023, pp 3-16
